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Recent
Stories
April
15, 2003
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
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Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
April
14, 2003
Chris
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Uri Avnery
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Madsen
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Shahid
Alam
Iqra: Iraq is Free
Hani
Shukrallah
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Terry
Jones
The Iraq Gravy Train
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The Iraq War's Trashiest Piece of Propaganda
Patrick
Cockburn
US has a Lot to Answer For: Violence,
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Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/14
April
12 / 13, 2003
Carol
Lipton
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Madsen
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John
Brown
"They Got It Down": the Toppling
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Kathy and
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Blum
Our Vulnerable Warmongers' Rush to Justify Devastation
Wallace
Gagne
Let the Stealing Begin
Ann
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Render Unto Cesar
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April
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Greed is Rewarded
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Vest
The Corporate War on Iraq
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Now What?
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Website
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What Can the World Do Now That Tanks Prowl Baghdad?
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The Unseen War
Geoffrey
Neale
Ashcroft's War on the Constitution:
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Jeffrey
St. Clair
Last Tango in Baghdad
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Guthrie
Rumors of War
Joseph
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Nately's Old Man
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War Web Log 4/10
Website
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Lummis
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Davis
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America's Sovereign Right to Do
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Gagne
Baghdad Babble
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Steve
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War Web Log 4/8
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April
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Todd
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Harry Browne
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War and Art
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War Web Log 4/7
April
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Alexander
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Anne
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William
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Gila
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Joanne
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Civilian Deaths and Official Apologies
John Stanton
Bush Takes His Killing Orders
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Romi
Mahajan
Learning to Count the Dead
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After Iraq, US Vows to Deal with
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Mary
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Gay Marine Refuses to Fight
William
MacDougall
Country Music and the Crimes of Patriotism
Ron
Jacobs
War and Occupation
Bernie
Pattison
Aborigines and the Different God
Mark
Engler
Iraq War as Arms Expo
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Li'l Box of Love: a Novelini
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Flesh and Its Discontents: the Paintings of Lucian Freud
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Canada and the War
April
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Colin Powell's Shame
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The Meaning of Victory
Tom
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The Mantra of the Troops: Support
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The Absence of War
Vijay
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There Are No More Arguments
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The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
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Tristam
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The Deadly Mihrab
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April
3, 2003
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A Crooked Mirror: Presstitution and
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David
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Can You Hear the Silence?
Anthony
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Colin Powell Telemarketer
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War, Debts and Deficits
Ramzy
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Now That Iraqis Are Being Killed Is Israel Any More Secure?
Jo Wilding
From Baghdad with Tears
Anton
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Cluster Bombs on Babylon
Alison
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Israel, We Won't Forget Rachel Corrie
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War's First Week
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April 16,
2003
Don't Tell Me
"I Told You So"
Mourning Iraq
by
CAROL NORRIS
Please don't talk to me of "precision bombing"
and "liberation." Don't talk of "minimal loss
of life" and cheering Iraqis. Don't come with your "I
told you so." and your "See, the war wasn't that bad."
Because I know better. I know there
was little that was precise and liberating about this war. I
know while many Iraqis are thrilled to be done with Saddam; they
are equally appalled at how this war has played out.
And what of your "I told you so"?
You said the reason we must go to war
and flout international law and the UN is because Saddam has
weapons of mass destruction and must be stopped. I see none,
despite the attempts of the Bush administration to concoct them.
You said we must go to war despite the
opposition of the majority of the peoples of the world, galvanizing
many of them against us because Saddam was a threat to my safety.
He is a despicable man who has done horrible things.
If he were able, he would've surely fought
brutally. And he would've fought to best of his ability, which
is what I imagine he did. But apparently, he was not the threat
we thought he was.
So you want me to be proud that the Bush
and Blair administrations have defeated a militarily impotent,
awful tyrant by way of leaving countless children already weakened
from over a decade of sanctions and random US bombs, motherless,
homeless and limbless; leaving hospitals and relief agencies
looted and depleted to the point of being ineffectual; leaving
a decimated infrastructure; leaving thousands with nothing to
drink but water contaminated with human waste; leaving annihilated
houses and neighborhoods and shops and public spaces.
You want me to be proud of killing immeasurable
numbers of men, women and children. And they will be immeasurable
because the staggering power of US bombs has turned many of my
fellow human beings into "pink mist," the horrific
previously-coined term used for what often remains of human life
as it rises from the ground after the bombs drop. I am not
proud.
I am horrified and sickened and grief-stricken.
I am grief-stricken for the American
and British soldiers and their families who have suffered and
who mourn injury and death and, like those from the first Gulf
war, may very well suffer further from the horrible effects of
depleted uranium exposure, sacrificing their quality of life
for perhaps the rest of their lives over a war that never should
have been. I am horrified and grief-stricken that some in our
government have called Iraq a "deeply sick" society,
that some of our soldiers have been indoctrinated so profoundly
they have forgotten they are supposed to be liberators as they
talk of hating Iraq and looking forward to "taking out"
a few people, one soldier saying with chilling glibness, "The
chick was in the way" in response to killing an innocent
civilian woman.
I am horrified and grief-stricken that
the Bush administration and the media unconscionably parade a
staged photo-op, where a meager couple of hundred people were
corralled to fill a cameraperson's lens, as US marines - not
Iraqis - pulled down a statue of Saddam, for all the world to
see, using this a "proof" that all Iraqis unite in
joyful liberation. The Bush administration knows the people
of the US we will cling to this image, desperately wanting to
believe it is true, trying to push what many of us know in our
hearts - that this war was brutal and wrong - out of our minds.
I am grief-stricken because this photo-op
is the cruel addition of insult to injury to the Iraqi people.
It unflinchingly demeans their pain, and obscures their reality.
Where are the photos of the rest of the millions of Iraqis?
Where are the photos of those who have
been devastated by the loss of entire families, those who desperately
fight one another for a looted chair, who are angry at the US
for not protecting them, scrounging for food and filthy water
amidst the unexploded cluster bombs and tons and tons of birth-defect
causing depleted uranium, hiding in what is left of their homes,
if they are lucky, terrified, shell-shocked, and worn?
I am horrified by the colossal hypocrisy
of the Bush administration that uses the US-orchestrated voices
of a couple of hundred people as ultimate proof of the goodness
of this war, yet when millions upon millions of people around
the world raised their voices in protest for months on end, Bush
relegated them to an inconsequential "focus group."
I am horrified and saddened that the
media at times prints grossly misleading polls, saying the majority
of Americans are for the war, using sample sizes that wouldn't
be considered representative in any credible scientific study.
(One major paper, for example, stated 63% of the people of an
area with over 6.7 million were for the war. They polled 204
people.) Polls are used to manipulate opinion, not quantify
it.
I am horrified and saddened further at
how the media has perpetuated the ridiculously simplistic and
false assertion that opposing the war equals lack of concern
for the troops. Those of us who have voiced our opposition to
the war are concerned for the safety and welfare of all involved,
including the troops.
And we know it is absurd to state otherwise.
I am sickened, yet not surprised, that
of all the looting of all the buildings that has turned Baghdad
into a free-for-all, one of the only places the US forces guarded
with any real effort was the Ministry of Oil.
And I am horrified and grief-stricken
over the complete pillaging and destroying of a museum beyond
price that housed precious, irreplaceable artifacts from the
birth of human civilization. A museum that held reminders that
you and I and those the Bush and Blair administrations have killed
for no justifiable reason are ultimately descended from the same
human cradle.
So, please don't talk to me fortified
with TV network slogans and easily evoked sound bites because,
like millions around the world, I know better. Come ready to
engage in a true dialogue, with well-reasoned facts gotten from
outside as well as inside the US. And please, speak in tones
reserved for respect for the dead and the grieving. Because
along with much of the world; I am in mourning.
Carol Norris
is a writer and psychotherapist. She is a member of CODEPINK:
Women for Peace. She can be contacted at writing4justice@planet-save.com.
Today's
Features
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Robert
Jensen
Self-Determination in Iraq? Then the
US Must Leave
Dr.
Susan Block
The Rape of Iraq
Ron Jacobs
Aiming at Syria: Stop Them Before They Kill Again
Robert
Fisk
The Final Sacking of Baghdad
Col. Dan
Smith
Post-War Iraq: Asking the Right Questions
Ali
Abunimah and Hussein Ibish
A Cycle of Chaos and Confrontation: Misadventures of the NeoCons
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 4/15
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